Zoom Valentino Rossi

Valentino Rossi brought out the best for his home fans once again in Mugello this afternoon, taking a stunning pole position to ensure he will start tomorrow's quest for a ninth Mugello victory in the best possible way.

The Italian's 50th career pole has been a long time in coming, his last one having been at Catalunya last season, almost one year ago. It is also his first for Bridgestone and Yamaha's sixth from seven races this season.

Rossi greeted his fans in slightly unusual fashion today as he unveiled his traditional one-off Mugello helmet, which this year carries a picture of his face on top of it. Joking aside however this morning's practice was another disjointed session with the track drying throughout after yet another rain shower and Rossi finishing sixth.

After his crew made some slight, but important modifications to his M1 over lunch it was a different story this afternoon, as Rossi dominated a hot and sunny qualifying session. He was consistently fast on race tyres and then improved with the first three of his four Bridgestone qualifying tyres, bettering the existing pole position lap by more than 0.8 seconds with the third.

Rossi's team-mate Jorge Lorenzo struggled with the lack of dry track time after yesterday's washout and was unable to find a perfect set-up for his M1, qualifying at the head of the second row in seventh. After two days of poor weather however the sun that finally came out this afternoon looks set to continue through tomorrow, when the 23-lap Italian Grand Prix gets underway at 1400 local time.

Valentino Rossi
“This is a great, great qualifying because it's been a long wait to be on pole position again, almost one year exactly! Now for sure we will try to win tomorrow. To be honest I was quite worried after practice this morning because we had a few problems with the set-up and I couldn't find my rhythm, but I want to say thank you to all my team because they made a great job during lunch, we did some important modifications and then this afternoon I had the feeling and the speed that I wanted. We're now fast on race tyres but we still need to make our final decision about which tyre to use and we will do this when we see the conditions tomorrow. It's great to make my first pole with Bridgestone and I think 48.1 is a very fast time and it shows how good their qualifying tyres are now. It's good as well to have two Italians on the front row and now I hope we have a lot of people here tomorrow and that we can make a big party once again! I have to be honest about my helmet, it was Aldo Drudi's idea this time but I think it's one of the best ever! It's not a drawing, it's a real picture of my face at the braking at the end of the straight here and I think it's very funny!”